The instant invention resides in the art of photographic equipment and more particularly relates to a device allowing for the direct production of a screened print made directly from a continuous tone negative.
Previously, in the newspaper industry, photographic negatives would be considered for publication as newspaper prints and would be developed and enlarged to a fixed predetermined print size. The editor would select from the available prints the pictures he desired for inclusion in the newspaper. He would then crop the selected prints by marking on the backs thereof the portions to be deleted in the published picture. He would further select an appropriate size for the picture as would be dictated by column width and the positioning of the associated article within the newspaper. With the prints having been cropped and appropriate sizes selected, the same would be placed in a standard process camera through which an operator could crop and size the print so as to acquire from the process camera the screened print of the desired picture for inclusion in the newspaper. As will be appreciated by those skilled in the art, such a process includes the time-consuming and expensive intermediate steps of the production of a continuous tone print with the subsequent production of a screened print made by diffusion transfer or contact print from a screened negative.
In order to conserve time and expense in the production of a newspaper layout, it is more beneficial that the exposed negative as taken by the newspaper photographer be used directly for producing the screened print, eliminating the time-consuming and costly intermediate steps of the prior art. Further, in prior art systems, it is extremely difficult to obtain a proper balance between the highlight areas of a print and the shadow areas of a print so as to achieve good clarity. Indeed, utilizing presently known process cameras, several passes are generally required for producing an acceptable screened print which will achieve a clear, sharp picture in the final publication. However, multiple attempts at such production are intolerable in a day of spiraling costs of labor and photographic development supplies. It is therefore most desirable to achieve prints of sharp clarity or of "balanced dot" directly from a continuous tone negative, with the first screened print achieved thereby being of the ideal quality for newspaper publication.
Finally, the prior art has required that the operator of the process camera by one of some significant skill. Such skills are those acquired and developed over a period of time since only the operator's eye is used to determine print clarity and subsequent process camera adjustments. By providing a system which includes means for measuring the exposure of the screened print, adjustments may be made on an analytical basis rather than the subjective basis of the operator's own judgment.